Some Chanukah trivia

1. What does the word Maccabee mean?
2. Who were the five sons of Mattathias?
3. What is a Chanukah lamp called?
4. What are the letters on a dreidel outside of Israel? Inside Israel?
5. In which book of the Bible do we read the story of Chanukah?
6. Who was Judith and why is she mentioned on the Shabbat of Chanukah?
7. What was Mattathias’s wife’s name?
8. How many candles are in a box of Chanukah candles?
9. Why do we give gelt on Chanukah?
10. How many years occurred between the desecration of the Temple and the killings in Modiin by Mattathias and the Maccabee uprising?
11. According to Jewish custom, what kind of oil should be used for the Chanukah lights?
12. Why were the schools of Hillel and Shammai in disagreement about Chanukah?
13. What is unique about the mitzvah of kindling Chanukah lights?
14. How should one popularize the mitzvah of lighting the candles for Chanukah?
15. What king ordered the people of his kingdom to become Greek in religion and culture?
16. Why don’t Jews celebrate the things really done by the Maccabees?
17. Why did Judah Maccabee want this holiday celebrated for eight days?
18. Who were the Hasmoneans?
19. How long did the war continue after the Temple was rededicated?
20. How did each of the Maccabean brothers die?

 Trivia answers

1. One tradition says it means hammer and was applied to the Maccabee family because of their strength. Another says it stands for Mi kamocha baelim Adonai, Who is like you among the great ones, O G-d?
2. Judah, Jonathan, Jochanan, Eleazar, Simeon
3. Chanukiyah
4. Nun, gimmel, hay, shin; nun, gimmel, hay, po
5. The story does not appear in any book of the Bible. It is found in Maccabees I and Maccabees II, part of the Apocrypha, books not included in the Bible.
6. Judith was a Hasmonean woman, whose story is a book of the Apocrypha. She saved her town from destruction by killing the general in charge.
7. No one knows because she is never mentioned in the books of Maccabees.
8. 44
9. During the Middle Ages, adults began to play games on Chanukah. In the 1700s, children began to play dreidel and were given coins for playing.
10. One year
11. Olive oil
12. Hillel wanted one light on the first night and additional lights added each night. Shammai wanted eight lights on the first night and one subtracted each night.
13. Even if one does not have food to eat, one should beg or sell their clothing to buy oil and lamps to light for Chanukah.
14. Place the lights at or near the outer part of the door facing the street or in a window facing the street.
15. Antiochus Epiphanes
16. The rabbis did not want military battles commemorated, so they created the story of the oil being found by the Maccabees and lasting eight days.
17. Because the men had been fighting at the time of Sukkot and had not celebrated it, they decided to commemorate that holiday by observing this one for eight days.
18. The Maccabees were part of the House of Hashmon and called Hasmoneans, a title of honour that denoted its high standing.
19. The war continued 127 more years.
20. Judah was in battle and his unit became sandwiched between two enemy divisions. Eleazar was under attack by a unit on elephants – he thought the king or general was on a particular elephant so he thrust a sword into the elephant and it fell on him and crushed him. Yochanan was attacked by a tribe near the Dead Sea. Simeon was entertained by his son-in-law, made drowsy from wine and assassinated by the son-in-law’s accomplices. Jonathan was put to death by the Syrian king Tryphon.

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.